Saturday, 19 May 2012

Album review: SIGUR RÔS - Valtari

Whatever you might think
of these guys, cynical grin is inevitable. The cheerful vibes of Með suð í
eyrum við spilum endalaust didn’t
stick, and we’re back in the sophisticated gloom of the band’s pre-2008 period.
Surely no one will have a problem with that; the jolly acoustic rhythms did
sound rather effective, but it’s the self-conscious, long-winded soundscapes of
beautiful, cold Icelandic sadness you want from this band.

Obviously, when approaching
a Sigur Ros album you don’t ask yourself ‘will this be beautiful?’. That is
never in doubt. No, it’s all about how
pretentious / transcendental / slow / dirgy / appealing / boring this beautiful will be.
And with Valtari Sigur
Ros recorded what might well be the band’s least immediate album of all.

Valtari is
beautiful in a meditative, extremely understated sort of way. Only through
patience and calm will these eight songs start revealing Jonsi’s leisured
falsetto hooks and meat beneath this epic, sweeping instrumental minimalism.
The atmosphere is slow yet seductive, and in the end it’s the singular Sigur
Ros atmosphere that will drag you into the beauty of this music.

Sometimes, however, no
amount of patience and determination will help you discern any sort of
substance in these songs. Which brings me to that long-gone day when I saw a
girl in a record store looking for Sigur Ros records she didn’t yet have. There
weren’t any, but the girl was desperate to spend some money on music (no longer
a common thing, by the way). She turned to the record store owner, the record
store owner turned to me. “The girl likes Sigur Ros, what should she get?” I
was nosing around the post-punk section, and without thinking twice I pointed
the girl in the direction of some early Siouxsie & The Banshees stuff. The
girl took her pink-coloured wallet out. She probably hated me when she came
home and played the record, but I’ve never really felt sorry for whatever it
was that I did.